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'Nessie of Loch Ness has her own publicist. The various mane-necked sea-serpents that swim the Pacific Ocean-- Caddy the Cadborosaurus, Penda, the Old Man of Monterey Bay, the tanihwa-- share a description consistent enough that their possible existence is worthy of further study. The New England Sea Serpent launched a scientific investigation and received an honourary degree from Harvard University. The Kraken managed to swim its way into the text books, in the form of the giant squid (Architeuthis) and the Colossal Squid (Mesonychoteuthis)-- and evidence exists that The Colossal Octopus also scuttles beneath the seas. The Australian bunyip has been the subject of children's books. The Ogopogo has its own theme song, Oscar of Churubusco has an annual festival in its honour, and the Silver Lake Monster, a controversy over whether it was an actual hoax or a hoax about a hoax.'
But nobody seems to recall the Moha Moha.
It's an engaging-looking chimera. Reportedly, this inhabitant of Queensland's Great Barrier Reef resembles a giant long-necked turtle with the tail of a fish. Miss S. Lovell, a school marm from Sandy Cape on Great Sandy Island reported the following, in 1890:
We have had a visit from a monster turtle fish. I send a sketch of it. It let me stand for half an hour within five feet of it. When tired of my looking at it, it put its large neck and head into the water and swept round seaward, raising its dome-shaped body about five feet out of the water, and put its twelve feet of fish-like tail over the dry shore, elevating it at an angle. Then, giving its tail a half-twist, it shot off like a flash of lightning, and I saw its tail in the air about a quarter of a mile off where the steamers anchor...The jaws are about 18 inches in length; the head and neck greenish-white, with large white spots on the neck, and a band of white round a very black eye... The body was dome-shaped, about 8 feet across and 5 feet high, smooth, and slate-grey in colour. Tail about 2 feet, the fish part wedge-shaped, and fin of chocolate-brown. Then beautiful silver shading to scales size of thumb nail.
Her correspondence, forwarded to Land and Water, went on to indicate the scales were perpendicular to the axis of its body, and related a tale of how it had reportedly attacked an Aborigine camp eight years earlier.
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